There's lots of translation work to do for the OpenStreetMap project, both by translating the map data itself by giving names to objects on the map in multiple languages and by translating programs related to OpenStreetMap. E.g. the OpenStreetMap website and various editors.

Contributions are invited from anyone who is able to provide full or partial translations. Sometimes development of internationalization support will be needed first.

This page is for listing the various places where translation efforts are being coordinated.

OpenStreetMap map data

Any object in the OpenStreetMap map data that has a name should be given a name=* tag. But translators can also add additional name tags for other languages, see Names#Localization for documentation on name tags with language prefixes, and take a look at this node for Vienna as an example.

This data permits map internationalization, renderings of the map for different languages and also it's useful data for searches to match on.

Multilingual Map Test

Jochen Topf created the Multilingual Map Test, an OSM map where you can switch the text to one of a number of languages. It works by outputting map tiles without text, and overlaying them with transparent PNG tiles rendered with the text in each language. If all placenames had names in all the languages it would multiply the number of tiles that must be generated by that number; but in practice most places only have a single name.

OpenStreetMap website interface

Since the wiki holds a lot of important help content and documentation, we'd like to make at least some of this available in other languages. Translation is taking place on a somewhat ad-hoc basis, and you are encouraged to join in, but we also need to try and get more organised about this; a full migration to translatewiki.net's and MediaWiki's Translate extension has not be decided yet. Let's set up more details on the Wiki Translation page.

Editors Translation

iD

JOSM

See JOSM translations on launchpad.net. More translation work is ongoing. (There are plans to switch from launchpad to Transifex, because there are often problems with the launchpad web interface due to the large number of strings in JOSM. See JOSM ticket.)

Potlatch

Potlatch 2's localization support is limited to the toolbar and Help dialog; the tagging interface cannot be translated. There is a fully-localizable fork of Potlatch 2 that is translated at Transifex; however, this is not the version used on openstreetmap.org.